


like real people do

by blueparacosm



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueparacosm/pseuds/blueparacosm
Summary: At the end of the world, Bellamy and Murphy start over.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/John Murphy
Comments: 14
Kudos: 78





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> *MAJOR SPOILERS FOR SERIES FINALE*
> 
> fic theme song, obviously: like real people do - hozier
> 
> [slaps ur ass] get in there

Murphy had been in purgatory for three months, and generally, he was happy. Things were normal and mundane, peaceful and boring. All they did was their chores, and when they were done with those, they got to do whatever they liked. No bombs ever went off, no missiles or spaceships shot from the sky, and no enemies or refugees ever showed up to send them into a tailspin, because they were all that was left. Generally.

A lakeside breeze tossed the air, and rocky sand roiled into mounds beneath his boots as he shifted his weight. It wasn't a bad place to be locked out of the afterlife.

“Ugh. I hate this part,” said Clarke, grimacing as she wedged her knife across the frail spine of a dead fish. Murphy scraped a handful of fish entrails from his cutting board and flung it into the bucket beside his feet, and Picasso sniffed its contents with far more interest than Murphy.

“Well, we _could_ be enjoying eternal peace right now, if a certain someone—”

Clarke clapped her knife against the table. “How long are you going to hold that against me? I’d like to see you try and pass some convoluted test to _prove humanity’s goodness._ ”

There was no small amount of mocking in her voice, and Commander Lexa who was not Commander Lexa, but some godlike alien creature wearing Lexa’s skin and constantly lurking around the village, studying the last of their ‘curious species,’ looked as if they tasted something sour but were choosing to keep quiet about it.

Murphy shrugged. “Touché. I was always crap at tests.” He paused in his filleting and tilted his head toward her, softening his tone after he noticed her expression was flickering with guilt. “I wouldn’t have had any fun in Heaven anyway. White really washes me out. I’d look terrible in the robes.” Clarke smiled, but her face fell as not-Lexa butted in.

“There are no robes. The universal consciousness is not a place but a state of being. Its members have no physical form with which to dress in robes.”

“Good to know,” sneered Murphy, as Clarke shook her head and resumed her work. He could never quite tell whether she was endeared by this strange, know-it-all version of her old girlfriend, who all but treated them like bugs under a glass, or if she could barely stand them.

Maybe Clarke was just afraid to look at them. Maybe it was easier for her to deal with when not-Lexa was more like a mirage. Before they finally made their presence known to the rest of them, wanting to interact, gathering data and plotting their species’ next cruel experiment in creating the perfect life form.

Sometimes Murphy thought to ask them questions, and knew they’d be eager to answer. Then he figured he’d seen enough weird shit in his lifetime. All he wanted now was to be normal, and do normal things, like swimming in the lake, and walking his dog, and gutting fish for dinner.

Murphy and Clarke were in charge of preparing the food that Gaia, Indra, and Octavia hunted, Emori and Niylah fished, and Hope and Echo gathered. Jordan and Raven were their builders, ever-improving their simple huts and cabins, crafting primitive tools just for the hell of it. Miller and Jackson gathered resources, chopped wood and scouted for supplies, made the trips to Sanctum that no one else wanted to make. Levitt, the sheltered Bardoan, mostly just seemed confused, but tried his best to help out and probably contributed more than Murphy, who only ever did enough to avoid being nagged.

There were normal things he liked less, but which couldn’t be helped: sunburns, his cabin full of sand, eating bad fish because Clarke couldn’t cook and getting the shits. Break-ups.

He tilted a half-smile at Emori as she hung off of her girlfriend’s shoulder, chattering away about the horrible tear in her favorite fishing net. Echo leaned down to lose a kiss in her sun-streaked hair, the way Murphy used to. Emori’s eyes creased with a content smile, sent amicably Murphy’s way as if to say, ‘I’m good. Are you?’

The two of them didn’t fare well during grace periods. They’d learned it the hard way and this time, knew when to lay the whirlwind romance to rest. Echo’s easy-going, supportive nature meshed well with Emori’s energy and ambition, better than Murphy’s sloth and jealousy, his jagged edges that served him well in war but pierced through every quiet moment.

But he wasn’t lonely. She was still his best friend, and he was surrounded by good people, and best of all, he had Picasso.

The dog had turned her big, dark eyes on him, well-aware he gave that animal just about anything she wanted. He flicked her a mysterious chunk of fish that she chomped out of the air, and then she sat on her heels, wagging her tail and waiting for more.

Everyone down to the dog was content. The fighting was over. The pain was gone. Everything was right with the world, and generally, Murphy was happy.

〰〰〰

_They sat at the bottom of the stairs, the hem of his white robe collecting moon dust. He was quiet and unhappy, staring at the backs of his hands, freckles dotted along his veins like grapes on vines. They were more frail than Murphy remembered, his skin laying loose over his bones._

_Murphy tried to ask what had become of him. He opened his mouth and moonlight slanted through his white breath, snowflakes worried in its cold eddy. But no words came forth._

_Beginning at the ends of his dark curls and the tips of his weary fingers, a golden light took him. Murphy reached out for him, and his hands passed through. He never once looked at Murphy as he faded away, crumbling apart into stars._

Murphy gasped awake. Sweat was cooling about his shoulders and neck, in the fabric of the hammock beneath his lower back. He uncurled his fingers from its edges until its aggravated swinging settled.

He took stock of the log lattice overhead, the fern fronds rustling in the windows, his knitted blanket kicked onto the floor, the cold nose dragging wetness across his knuckles. 

He let out a trembling laugh as Picasso stood on her hind paws and snorted against his neck, laved her rough tongue against his cheek. “Hey girl,” he sighed, curling his fingers behind the hard knot of a floppy ear, and smiled as she tilted her head against his hand. “I’m alright.”

Picasso sniffed him one last time, and then dropped down on all fours again. She retreated to her bed of pelts and lay down, but kept her eyes on him as he stared back.

His heart still rattled. He breathed in slowly through his nose, and out through his mouth. Then he lay back, and listened as crickets chirped in the woods to the north, as little waves rushed against the shore and stole handfuls of pebbles and shells, tumbling noisily into the water to the south. Moonlight shone in through the windows, casting a soft light on the few belongings to his name in the cabin that took three steps to cross. A king no more was he.

His bare feet scuffed over the sandy cabin floor as he put his legs over the hammock’s side and stood, fumbling through a crate of things with hands that shook. He found the book he’d asked Jackson to find for him, the first time he and Miller returned to the anomaly stone to fetch supplies from Sanctum which could not reasonably be reproduced with sticks and stones.

Murphy would have gone himself, but the dancing, glowing souls that Clarke recounted creeped him out, and he couldn’t stand to think of the lab where Emori had died, where he’d made to kill himself, too. Couldn’t stand to see the bloodstain on the palace floor though the body had been cast off, somewhere in the universe, as alone as he died.

He groped around the crate for a pen, and tore a last page from the book, because for all that he loved the story he’d never liked the ending. He tossed the book aside and set the pen to the page, and with fingers that shook, he wrote as well as he could.

It was cliché at best and a cop-out at worst, and his spelling couldn’t have been right, and his handwriting was atrocious. But he didn’t know what else to say, or how else to say it.

With the folded page in his hand and his boots left behind, he pushed open his rickety door and walked to where the forest’s soil met the beach not many steps at all from his cabin, closest to the lake than all the rest. He crossed the sand, cold with night and jagged with stones, and walked alongside the waves until he came to a rocky outcrop jutting out into the lake, its black surface smoothed over by time.

He stood still on the jetty as the wind plucked at his clothes, and he watched the dark water lap at the rock. With no one watching but the old mountains cupping the lake in their enormous earthen hands and the stars above, he unfolded the page and looked at it one last time.

_“In peece may you leve this shore._

_In love may you find the next._

_Safe passige on your travals, until our final journy to the ground._

_Bellamy Blake, may we meet again.”_

He stepped to the edge of the rock and held the note out over the water. With a shaking hand, he let it go. For a moment the note tumbled in the air, lost. Then it fluttered towards him again, landing at his feet. Murphy knit his brows and picked it up, and folded it in half and tried again.The note fell, and then unfolded just before it hit the water, like a paper dove unfurling its wings. It flew back to Murphy, skidding to a stop on the rock. He plucked it from the ground, tears pricking his eyes, and folded it into fours and released it again. The note came back, pinned to his chest by the wind.

Murphy cursed, scrunching the note into a ball and winding back his arm, and with a broken cry he flung it at the moonlit lake as hard as he could. It hit the water quietly, and slowly blossomed as the lake overtook it, the page graying, the paper softening, and the ink blurring, before it was swallowed up by the dark.

His tears tumbled over, and his hiked shoulders fell as he stared out over the water. Someone was watching him, because it seemed that when he cried the universe set off alarms and dropped a pin just to make sure he didn't escape the humiliation.

“What do you want,” he muttered, swiping his wrist beneath his wet nose, scrubbing his sleeve roughly across his eyes.

“I can feel your suffering,” answered not-Lexa. Murphy looked over his shoulder. They were standing on the shore with their hands folded in front of them, like always, peering at him with a keen eye. “I can feel your grief. It is almost as profound as Clarke Griffin’s, and yet you hide it, even at the further detriment to yourself.”

Murphy scoffed, turning away again. Not-Lexa carried on unperturbed.

“You were always a subject of interest. Many times in your brief life and with your fragile form, you recovered fully from severe physical damage, withstood extreme mental and emotional scarring, and even returned from death. You are a curious specimen.”  


He raised his head as realization struck, and glared out over the lake. “You. It was you who showed me Hell.”

“Many of us were involved in the creation and monitoring of humanity, not just myself. It was a beloved project by all. But yes, if that is what you would prefer to call it. Of all our experiments your species was one of the slowest to access the test and most expected to fail, and our gifts of visions of Transcendence were not proving to be as motivational as we’d hoped.

“We chose a subject that could endure visions of Elimination, instead. But you were not the first, and would not have been the last, seeing as you did not share your vision. Yet again, you internalized your fear and pain at the detriment to yourself and others. You were an especially difficult variable to contend with, John Murphy.”

“Is that what happened to Bellamy? You showed him a vision?”

“We did. He saw Transcendence. We thought perhaps you would finally share your vision of Elimination with him, and together communicate to the rest of your species the outcomes you had seen, the importance of proving your species’ capability for peace and advancement.”

“So I’m part of the reason he died. You gave him the vision because I didn’t talk to the others. Didn’t tell them about mine.” Some part of him wilted at the knowledge. He’d always wondered what might have been different if he’d believed Bellamy, if he’d gotten a real chance to hear him out. But he never imagined he might have been the weak link that let his friend fall.

“Perhaps,” not-Lexa mused. “Or perhaps it was the fault of our own, selecting the incorrect subjects upon which to bestow our visions.”

That shook him from his guilt, and he snapped, “Damn right it was your fault. You tortured us. Played with us. You’re _still_ playing with us. And if we hadn’t done what you wanted, you would have wiped us out. All because you were _curious._ Who the hell do you think you are?”

Not-Lexa said nothing, staring at his eyes, red and wild with fury and pain. He thought he saw a glimmer of pity flit across their expression, but it was gone as quickly as it came.

“Without us, your species never would have existed,” they said at last, as if that was something to brag about.

“So what?” snarled Murphy. ”All anyone ever did was suffer.”

“That is untrue. Many humans experienced what you call joy, pleasure, and love. Most, in fact.”

After a beat Murphy huffed, sitting down on the slick jetty and staring up at the stars. “I’m not arguing with an alien.”

Not-Lexa was silent, and though Murphy didn’t like them, he didn’t move away as they quietly walked out onto the rock and came to stand beside him.

There was a violet, dusk haze laving at the mountain peaks across the lake, lit by the stars and what was left of the moon. It’s light shone on the water too, so white, wind-tossed ripples danced bright and slow on the surface like Clarke had described the soul shadows to Murphy. Glimmering and humming, swaying, arms raised in an eternal dance.

“You know what sucks most about your little experiment?” he whispered to the alien.

“What is that?” asked not-Lexa, gazing up at the stars alongside him.

“We’re all here, or in your ‘collective consciousness’ thing, and the people who actually tried to do better… they died for it. Bellamy believed in Transcendence, and he didn’t even get a chance to experience it. Didn’t even get to live out the rest of his days here with us, at the very least. How is that fair?”

Not-Lexa was quiet for a long time. Finally, with their head still titled toward the night sky, they replied, “It isn’t.”

〰〰〰

Sunlight was barreling in when Murphy woke the next morning, disturbed from a restless sleep by the sound of a barking dog that must have been his. His head ached, and it was times like these that he kind of wished he had a cat instead.

His feet were still dirty from the night before but he peeled on his socks and stepped into his boots anyway, stumbling toward the cabin door by tracing the wall.  He gazed blearily out at the lakeside. Picasso was leaping in starts and stops around some debris that the wind must have pushed ashore, ducking close to investigate it before jumping away again, barking like mad.

Murphy grabbed the fetching stick from beside the door, thinking perhaps Picasso had some energy she needed to let out before she woke up the whole homestead losing it over a piece of driftwood.  But the closer Murphy came, the more his eyes adjusted to the light and the waking world, the less the object of Picasso’s worries looked like driftwood at all.

What he thought was algae became a mop of hair, and the plank became straight arms and legs, and by the time he was standing over it where it lied facedown in the sand, Murphy realized a body had found its way to their shore.

Earth should have been uninhabited, even before the rapture. There shouldn’t have been an intact corpse anywhere on the planet, let alone one that seemed to be breathing.

He poked the body with his stick, and it didn’t move. He poked it again in the side, and then pushed, rolling it over.

Bellamy Blake opened his eyes and spat out sand, and Murphy screamed.

〰〰〰

The panels of Octavia and Levitt’s cabin floor creaked as the former wore grooves into them, chewing her thumbnail and casting suspicious glances at her brother, who was sat at the table and watching her pace with a dumb sort of look on his face.

“Stranger things have happened, right?” suggested Levitt.

“Stranger than my dead brother washing up on the beach, alive, after we were _explicitly_ sentenced to be the last of the human race?” Levitt raised his brows and cranked his head a little at that, acknowledging her point. “And what about you? Don’t you have anything to say?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Bellamy, which seemed to be his answer to most things.

The reunion had been nice, at first.

Murphy’s hands had shaken as he cleared the sand from Bellamy’s eyes and settled them, trembling, on Bellamy’s chest. He couldn’t remember what he’d said to Bellamy, then, or what Bellamy had said to him. He only remembered kneeling there as the others emerged from their cabins at the sound of his shout, as Octavia reached him first and hustled them both into the privacy of her and Levitt’s abode, silent and pale with shock until she was able to collapse against her brother and hold him tight, mysterious circumstances be damned.

But Bellamy did not raise his arms to hug her back. And soon, they learned that he didn’t do much of anything Bellamy would have done. He wasn’t happy to see them, nor was he sad. Didn’t know how he’d gotten there or what had happened to him.

He didn’t even know his own damn name.

“Lift your shirt,” demanded Octavia suddenly, turning on Bellamy.

“Why?” he asked, sounding scandalized.

“If you’re really him, you’ll have a scar over your heart.”

Murphy didn’t think that was true, and by the look of him, he didn’t think Levitt believed so either. A shot through the heart should have killed him. _Did_ kill him. Anything that could undo that could undo a scar, too.

Bellamy hesitantly pinched the hem of his shirt and raised it up, slow. Murphy instinctively turned his gaze away, a little prudish when it came to Bellamy, but quickly the matter at hand outweighed that and he let his eyes drift over and up. His skin was unmarred as if he’d just been born.

“Bardoan healing tech,” explained Levitt, waving a hand. “Look, who cares what happened? I, for one, am sick of trying to uncover the secrets of the universe. Can’t we just be glad he’s alive?”

Octavia shook her head, unwilling to let sleeping dogs lie. “Something’s wrong. We don’t know what he is, or who sent him here.” She stopped pacing and pinched the bridge of her nose, and then came and kneeled before Bellamy, staring pleadingly up at his lost expression. “You really don’t remember anything? Anything at all?”

Bellamy was staring at his hands, and Murphy felt like crying and didn’t know why. “I remember…” He raised his eyes. “I remember a purple sky.”

〰〰〰

He was passed around like a rag doll, thrust from each pair of arms to the next. At first he was at a loss, arms dangling by his sides as Miller clapped him on the back and Jordan wrapped him in a tender hug. When Emori and Raven took their turns, he raised his arms in jerky motions, settling unsure hands on them. When Echo kissed his cheek, silent tears streaming down her own, a shy, flattered smile wobbled onto his face. And when Clarke cried into his shoulder for a full five minutes, mumbling, “I’m sorry,” over and over until her voice was hoarse, his eyes seemed to glimmer with a distant sort of sadness and he hugged her back, proper.

Murphy was standing a ways away and watching the whole affair, his fingers scratching absently at a tuft of golden hair as Picasso sat attentively by his side. Bellamy sent him curious looks now and again, as even Indra, Gaia, and Niylah had shaken his hand and welcomed him home. He must have believed Murphy didn’t like him.

He thought about straightening his shoulders and striding up, coming close to Bellamy’s touch, his voice and his stare. He thought about taking the embrace he was owed, what his fingers and palms might feel like skidding across Bellamy’s broad back, what his heart might feel like beating against Murphy’s chest. He thought about the nights when terror struck him at the thought of never feeling Bellamy again, never hearing his rockslide laugh or catching his eyes across a room and dragging that exasperated smile out of him.

Now his chance was right in front of him, and he had no idea how long it would last, and all Murphy could do was stand there.

His eyes drifted off from the scene and found not-Lexa had appeared again, standing in the tree line. There was a bittersweet smile on their face as they watched Bellamy speak quietly with a weeping Clarke, caging both her small hands in his. Murphy knit his brow, his heart’s thrums quickening.

Were they there to take Bellamy away?

Not-Lexa’s smile eased until it was nearly gone but not quite, and they approached as Octavia caught their stare and inched closer to her brother, narrowing her eyes and holding onto his arm. He suspected if not-Lexa meant to correct a mistake, they’d have to go through Skairipa first.

As the circle opened up to them, Clarke stepped to Not-Lexa, who swallowed, and whose flat stare flickered with surprise. Murphy had caught them slipping up more than once. Though stoic, whatever they were, they weren’t without emotion. Especially not when it came to Clarke.

For a long moment, Clarke didn’t speak, searching Not-Lexa’s expression. At last she said, “This was you, wasn’t it?”

Not-Lexa seemed to debate telling the truth, knitting their fingers together a bit tighter as their jaw shifted. Then they dropped their shoulders slightly, casting their eyes to Bellamy’s. “I… I used your friends’ memories of him. I remade him to the best of my ability."

Bellamy stepped back, eyes wide, his hand drifting up to skim across his own stubbled jaw and check that he was made of flesh and bone.

Octavia shook her head in disbelief. “He doesn’t know anything about himself. Is it even really him?”

“His consciousness died with his original body, yes. But the unworthy humans you called ‘the Primes’ got one thing right. There is no such thing as a soul. Your kind are made of your memories, and most of all you are sculpted by those who love you.

“I tried to imbue some memories using what you all knew of him. I do not know how exactly they will surface, or if they ever will. This was my first time recreating a human that has already lived. But you will have all your natural lives to remind him who he was.

“I’m sorry that I can’t do more for you. As you all were meant to be the last of the human race and I abused my access to my species’ technology to remake Bellamy, breaking the sacred rules of Transcendence, I have… had my place in the universal consciousness revoked. I am not welcome to return.” Not-Lexa tugged their braid self-consciously, looking suddenly less like a higher being and far more like a human. “I will be unable to change or separate from my physical form, and once this form dies, so too will I cease to exist. My work is finished."

Silence fell over the group, and Clarke stared at not-Lexa until their eyes began to shine and their lip began to shake. Then Clarke reached out and wrapped the being in a hug. They closed their eyes and leaned their head against Clarke’s, and curled their fingers in Clarke’s shirt.

“I’m so sorry,” murmured Clarke, and not-Lexa blinked their tears back.

“Perhaps it is for the best I was banished. I am not sure my species would be found worthy, if we were to take our own test. Some intelligent humans made me see the error of our ways, and I am not sure I could have continued my experiments in good faith.” They grinned, but it was a shaky thing. “Do not fear, I will intrude on your home no longer. There are many planets to choose from on which I can reside.”

Clarke gently held their arms and shook her head. “You don’t have to be alone, Lexa. You’re one of us now.”

Not-Lexa’s clasped hands fell apart. “…Lexa?”

“We’re sculpted by our memories and the people that love us, right?” Clarke said softly, bringing a hand to their painted cheek. “Well, you have her memories, and I love you.”

Not-Lexa— _Lexa_ trapped Clarke’s hand beneath her own, and looking at the blonde her eyes danced with stars, and Murphy finally saw it. What Clarke saw there that made her believe it was the same girl she fell in love with over a century ago.

And because this was the sort of situation where everyone was crying, Bellamy’s glittering eyes matched Octavia’s, and as she clutched his hand her tears spilled over. “You sacrificed everything. You…. Why? Why would you do this for us?”

Lexa’s eyes fell on Murphy, far outside of the group with his mouth hanging open, and though she was still teary-eyed, a sly little smile spread across her lips. “I suppose I was just curious.”

〰〰〰

Bellamy was alive, and Murphy was a creep.

He tried not to be, but he was scared to death of this new Bellamy, and loved him as much as he’d loved his friend all the same. So all he knew to do was keep his distance, but couldn’t tear his eyes away.

They tried to remind Bellamy he loved hunting by taking him out with the hunting party. His gun looked perfectly at home in his hands, but somehow different, at once. He wasn’t a threat with it, didn’t wield it flippantly. He kept the rifle on his back and twisted the strap in his hands, running his finger along its textured edge, because even days after Lexa’s confession he seemed to still be marveling at the knowledge that his body was not made in a womb, but sculpted in stardust and knitted together by a thousand memories, smack-dab in the middle of the galaxy.

He was sort of doe-eyed like that about everything. He was not the soldier they had come to know, nor was he the strict and anxious brother that Octavia had been raised by, who starred in so many of the stories she’d shared about him around the fire those few months they thought they’d lost him for good.

When they came back from the hunt hauling a boar, instead of glowing with confidence Bellamy looked sheepish. He said he couldn’t pull the trigger, his heart was pounding too hard. It took every ounce of Murphy’s self-control not to slam down everything in his hands and try and pick Bellamy up, spin him around a little.

Bellamy laughed louder and smiled wider. He loved stories, about himself, about them, about their triumphs and their failures and the vast world beyond the beach. He needed to be being regaled with one at almost all times, lest he start to feel adrift.

At times he almost seemed to recognize them, like when he asked if Octavia’s namesake was that of Octavia the Younger, or said Jordan looked like someone he thought he knew. He even seemed to know himself without help at times, such as when he took up one of Echo’s short swords as a joke and then performed perfect drills in the Azgeda fighting style, and the way he kept adding book titles to Miller and Jackson’s scavenging list, and how he used all of Bellamy’s favorite curse words.

It was good to see him happy, see him get a fresh start. Murphy was almost jealous. Scratch that, he was very jealous. But the issue remained: Murphy didn’t have a clue what to say to him.

When they met outside the drop ship one-hundred and nineteen summers ago they were both liars, putting on a show for one another. Bellamy wanted muscle and thought Murphy was brainless, too, and so offered him power that Murphy already had. And Murphy wanted…. Well, Murphy didn’t know what that stupid kid wanted. He guessed he just wanted Bellamy to like him, and his bad attitude and worse behavior seemed to do the trick, for a while. It was all a play at the start, and now the script was at the bottom of the lake.

How did he introduce himself now, when Murphy loved him too much to lie and Bellamy couldn’t have pretended to be someone else if he tried?  What if Bellamy didn’t like the real Murphy, after all their history was washed away?

So Murphy was a creep, and watched Bellamy from afar, smiling at him when he wasn’t looking and thinking of him when he wasn’t there. He supposed that was the one thing about them that hadn’t changed.

Murphy was heading back to his cabin, finished with his chores for the day and watching his boots shift under the sand with every step, thoughts off in a faraway place. Then he heard Picasso barking again. He looked up. Down the beach, far from the other cabins, was the perpetrator himself.

He was sat in the sand and watching the lake breathe, its edges inching curiously up the bank and shrinking back again. His shirt fluttered unbuttoned at his sides, and the afternoon sun beat down on his black curls and what a deep-collared tank revealed of his freckled chest. He looked utterly at peace, and chuckled at Picasso as she ran back and forth to the water’s edge, letting it wet her paws before she bounded up the shore like it was chasing her. Murphy’s heart did something. A bit like it was going to blow up.

Then Bellamy looked at him, and it stopped.

He quirked a brow at Murphy, considering him from afar. Murphy raised an awkward hand in greeting, and Bellamy’s lips suddenly split into a big grin, like he’d recognized a friend. He scooted over unnecessarily in the sand and patted the space beside him.

Murphy looked over his shoulder, wide-eyed and nervous. When he looked back, Bellamy’s head had fallen back on his shoulders in an exasperated laugh. He shook his head, still grinning, and beckoned Murphy toward him with an exaggerated wave of his arm.

Without a clue else what to do, and like he so often did when Bellamy Blake asked something of him, Murphy gave in.

He crossed the beach and stood beside Bellamy, avoiding the smile tilted up at him, and then lowered himself down onto the sand in stuttering, unsure movements, until he was good and truly trapped.

“You’re shy,” appraised Bellamy, staring at the side of his head.

Murphy’s face scrunched under the scrutiny, and he plucked at his jeans. “I guess.”

An amused little breath flit from Bellamy, but he took mercy on Murphy and turned his gaze out onto the lake again. “We haven’t met. At least, not this time around.”

Murphy swallowed. “I’m Murphy. Well, I’m John. But you call me Murphy. I mean, everyone calls me Murphy. Mostly. Some don’t. But you… do.”

Jesus.

Bellamy was clearly trying not to laugh, which was nice of him, and instead picked a rock out of the sand to sling it into the lake. Murphy thought of his letter, because he hadn’t already been embarrassed enough in the last twenty seconds, and winced.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bellamy noticed. “I’m Bellamy,” he said, perhaps in an effort to look equally stupid, which was just the sort of ridiculous shit he always did to try and make Murphy feel better about himself.

“I’m aware,” Murphy replied. He wished he didn’t always sound so mean, but Bellamy didn’t flinch. He never did.

“Just making sure. You’ve been a bit of a stranger,” said Bellamy, dropping his hand and searching the sand for another stone. When he found one, he didn’t throw it, just turned it over and over in his fingers. “But I think we’re friends, you and me. Am I right?”

And just like that, tears sprang to Murphy’s eyes. He turned to look at Bellamy fully, whose smile grew at the sorry sight of him.

“Yeah,” croaked Murphy. “Yeah, we’re friends.”

“Good,” Bellamy answered, and leaned back, splaying his hands out on the sand, the picture of serenity again. “So go on then, tell me about all our adventures.”

Murphy picked at the loose string on his jeans again, feeling his optimism darken as if a switch had been flipped. “Most of ‘em are more like horror stories, to be honest.”

“Well…” Bellamy grunted as he lumbered up standing, towering over Murphy, who feared he had screwed them for good. Oh, the irony of believing Bellamy would hate Murphy without their past at their backs, and then believing he’d hate him just the same if he got a whiff of it.

Bellamy brushed off his hands and his trousers, beating the sand from them, and said, “That’s fine. I’ll pry them out of you eventually. But until then, what do you say we make some that aren’t so scary?” He stuck out a hand, and though Murphy drew his brows together, he took it. Even once he was standing, Bellamy didn’t let go. 

His eyes flit between Murphy’s eyes and he shifted his grip ever so slightly. Murphy looked between them as Bellamy slowly swiped his thumb across the back of Murphy’s hand. Then Bellamy seemed to make a decision, turning his palm so that their hands were held between them, and tugged Murphy along.

Murphy stumbled after him as Bellamy walked along the water’s edge, determined, and Picasso darted ahead and splashed in the shallow water, sending the minnows screaming. 

“What exactly are we doing?”

“Going for a walk,” Bellamy answered matter-of-factly, staring at the ground as they moved slowly along the shore. Murphy dubiously followed his eyes.

“And we’re looking for…?”

Bellamy suddenly crouched, yanking Murphy down with him. He plucked a snail shell from the ground, and held the bronze spiral up to his eye. Then he pocketed it and stood up again, still scanning the lake's shore.

Murphy squinted. “Shells. I don’t remember you ever expressing much of an interest in _shells.”_

“Maybe you didn’t know everything about him. Er, me. Or maybe I’m… Maybe I’m just different,” Bellamy explained, his roaming eyes stilling for a moment, before he shook his head and went back to searching.

“No, I… I guess I never asked."

Bellamy glanced up, pinning Murphy in place with a soft, grateful sort of smile. “I like rocks, too. Tell me if you see quartz.”

He hunched over again, flipping a chipped clamshell over. Quartz, Murphy thought, disbelieving, and stared at the side of his head. He wasn’t sure why he remembered Bellamy as being a severe sort of handsome, gazing now at the dark ringlets of soft hair about his ears and the bow of his lips, the freckles scattered across the curved bridge of his nose like shells in the sand.

His eyes flicked down to the sparse space between them, Murphy’s hand nearly hidden by Bellamy’s, just the pale tips of his fingers curving into sight. The scars on their knuckles used to match, but now it was only Murphy whose skin went tight and shiny at the joints. He flexed his fingers experimentally, and Bellamy absently squeezed back, still acutely focused on his strange little hunt.

Murphy’s heart stirred. He wondered what they must have looked like from the homestead, two dark shapes against the mountains and the lake, brand new and so close.

They had been more intimate, if he looked the truth of them in its old, war-weary eye. Murphy’s flesh had taken bullets for Bellamy, and Bellamy had stood under a missile for Murphy. It didn’t get much crazier than that, did it?

So he could make his peace with this— walking hand in hand with Bellamy down the beach, searching for rocks and shells because Bellamy was a nerd and Murphy would have done anything he asked. Because Murphy loved him at the end of the world, and then some.

“Alright then,” he gave in at last, turning his eyes to the shore beneath their boots. “Tell me what quartz looks like. In four words or less,” he warned, just as Bellamy was opening his mouth. Bellamy grinned at him again, playfully offended with his brows askew.

It was the same smile Murphy had seen a hundred times.

〰〰〰

They were all glad the war and the strife was over and all, but sometimes life got boring. And if you were Murphy, it was always boring.

Miller and Jackson always brought books and games from Sanctum, and though for some reason they had thus far tried to keep the homestead _au naturel,_ Murphy imagined they would break soon and start dragging out the generators and solar panels and battery packs and chargers and speakers and iPods and televisions and disk players, because they were only human, after all.

Until then they had fishing tournaments, and played beach bocce ball, and some nights they built up a fire and enjoyed Murphy’s only real contribution to the place: funky, _funky_ booze.

“How’d you learn to make this?” said Bellamy, watching curiously as Murphy poured him a cup of wild brew. He was nearly shouting over the crackling bonfire, Niylah’s guitar, and the group’s boisterous laughter and song.

“Our friend Monty told me his and Jasper’s recipe. Mash up some fruit, leave it out in the wind for three days, bottle it and bury it for a month, voilà.”

Bellamy made a face at his drink. “Sounds delicious.”

“It’s not,” said Murphy, and clinked their cups together.

After giving his nod of thanks Bellamy ambled off to rejoin the party. He slouched on the seat Octavia offered him on the log beside her, and took a swig of his drink. He pulled perhaps the worst face Murphy had ever seen, screwed up like he’d tasted a million lemons, and inside the lemons was sauerkraut. Murphy grinned and shook his head.

“I didn’t realize how much you missed him,” said Raven, holding out her cup for a refill. Murphy arched a brow. “You’re smiling again.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, and filled her cup instead. Raven didn’t leave, turning to watch Bellamy, too. Her cheek dimpled as she watched him chat with the others, filling the hole by the fire where his ghost used to sit.

“It’s kind of a miracle, right? That we get a second chance?”

“It’s not the second. We used that one up a long time ago,” said Murphy, as Bellamy laughed at one of Indra’s muttered quips, making the warrior startle, then smile. “But it might be the last.”

Raven clapped him on the shoulder. “So don’t blow it, dork.”

Murphy wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean, and stared after her as she limped back to the bonfire and eased down sitting, smiling as Niylah abandoned her instrument to reach out and steady her. Everyone boo’ed at the guitar chords falling away, and Niylah rolled her eyes. Then Levitt took the new semblance of quiet as an opportunity to stand and raise his cup.

“Tonight,” he declared, “we drink to homecomings and reunions, to friends and family, to a life of peace, love, and light, and as always, to Murphy’s disgusting hooch.”

_“Hear, hear!”_

Murphy took a bow as the group’s cheer crumbled apart into laughter, though each of them raised their drinks to him before clanking their tins together, and threw back some of his sludge.

The stars were bright, the fire was warm, and the company was good. Though they weren’t any use anymore, Murphy still had desperate little moments where he saw joy flit by and felt like he had to dig his claws into it. Moments where it all felt like a dream or some nasty trick, and a cold bucket of water was about to tip over and drench him. It seemed it wasn’t only him.

“This doesn’t feel real, sometimes,” admitted Jackson, his soft smile fading. “Like it’s too good to be true.”

“I assure you, this is real,” promised Lexa, who was apparently too preoccupied with Clarke’s pinky finger brushing hers to go on a tangent about it.

“That’s exactly what a hallucination would say,” accused Jordan.

Jackson carried on, releasing his lip from his teeth. “But don’t you guys ever wonder if _we’re_ real? Like, we all Transcended, besides Clarke— no offense Clarke—“

“None taken.”

“—and then we chose to come back for one last life, and we were here again. New bodies with no injuries or flaws, besides the things that made us _us_. And now we’re here in some state of betweenness, the last of our kind, and even our species wasn’t really _real_ either, since it was all a big, weird cosmic experiment. Like, how do we know we’re really people?”

“‘People' is officially an antiquated idea, Jax. Look around you. We got Pinocchio here,” said Miller, flapping a hand at Bellamy, “The Commander’s a damn alien,” he continued, pointing at Lexa, “and the rest of us turned into adorable little balls of light and then got shoved through the galactic Xerox machine. We’re all a bunch of universal flotsam.”

Miller seemed to have surprised himself, and sat down slowly as the homestead fell quiet.

Not sure what he felt or how strongly he felt it, Murphy scratched Picasso’s head a little absently and watched the others think. Watched him.

Bellamy, with his curls traced in tangerine firelight and sparks dancing in his dark eyes, who sketched a finger along the lines of his own palm, wondering again who the hell he was.

Most days, Murphy wasn’t even sure about himself.

〰〰〰

Night came, as it was wont to do, and he was alone again. Picasso stayed with Clarke sometimes. He missed her nails clicking on the floorboards, the sound of her kicking at her pelts in a dream, the frequent flapping of fronds over the makeshift doggy door that he’d carved into the human door, as she darted in and out of the world, no concern for the darkness nor the quiet.

Sometimes she reminded him of Bellamy, who was an incorrigible insomniac. On the Ring he’d be up at strange hours, fretting over something unfixable or hunched over some ridiculous project that he swore needed to be done. Murphy only knew because he himself slept nearly all day, and appreciated being left to his own devices in the dark after Monty’s timers decided it was night and shut off all the lights.

He remembered, one night, sitting across from Bellamy at a table in the middle of the cafeteria, nothing but Bellamy’s silly headlamp lighting up the space between them, and doing a jigsaw puzzle.

It was a picture of the sea. Sharks and tropical fish and a coral reef. Five-hundred pieces. They lost their last piece in the dark and only found it once they stood up and realized Murphy had been sitting on the poor clownfish all along, and Bellamy must have really been tired because he laughed and laughed like he couldn’t imagine anything funnier in the world. Laughed and reached across the table to hold onto Murphy’s arm, and turned him pink as ocean coral.

Murphy forgot what he was doing, still tilted to blow out the candle on the windowsill. The little flame flickered, and its light shone on a black oyster shell, spread in halves like angel’s wings. Bellamy’d given it to him, a couple of days ago when they’d walked beside the lake and scoured for his stupid shells and Murphy pretended he wasn’t terrified to be holding his hand.

He wasn’t sure what was real. He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do. He didn’t know what Raven meant by, “Don’t blow it,” and he didn’t know whether he was already doing it.

All Murphy knew was he was glad that the universe saw fit, in all its eons of exploding stars and sculpting species and starting galaxies over from scratch, to drop him and Bellamy into the same test tube out of a billion. Even if it was always only meant to blow.

He was just about to snuff the candle out when the door flew open, and Bellamy flung sand all across the threshold.  Murphy stared at the sand in dismay, and only looked up when Bellamy blurted, “I’m not flotsam.”

“What?”

The door swung closed behind him, and candlelight spilled over his flustered face, his curls all tossed awry like he’d run there. “I’m sorry I’m not the same Bellamy. But I’m not some kind of empty husk. I remember things. I like books, and history, and hunting, like everyone says. But I also like shells, damn it. And you act like we hardly know each other, but I know I like _you._ And that’s real.”

If Murphy had known anything, he wouldn’t have had time to open his mouth and say so. Bellamy crossed the cabin in one sure step and tugged him forward by the front of his sweatshirt, and pressed his lips to Murphy’s.

Bellamy kissed like he was trying to prove a point, tilting forward until Murphy was craning his neck. But his mouth was gentle, his lips gritty with sand. When he pulled back, his jaw was clenched and his eyes were on fire, steeling himself to either be punched or made out with, because he hadn’t really thought through jumping John Murphy.

And Murphy smiled, because that was Bellamy alright.

His fierce eyes widened as Murphy shot forward, gripping him by the sides and kissing him hard. So hard that they stumbled backwards and fell onto the hammock, which spun out from under them and flipped. Murphy gasped as they hit the ground, his chest slamming against Bellamy’s, who quite likely dented his floorboards with his elbows and his cannonball of a head.

Murphy reached up to check for injuries and Bellamy’s fingers followed, and bumped against something he’d fallen on. He wedged the paperback out from under his head and held it up to the little slice of candlelight that reached them still, and he grinned.

“Is this Romeo and Juliet?”

Murphy lifted himself off of Bellamy’s chest and planted his hands beside Bellamy’s broad shoulders, glancing at the paperback and wondering how on earth Bellamy was getting distracted by a book even now. “Yeah, got it from the castle.”

Bellamy fingered through the pages, and Murphy’s heart skipped a beat as he traced the jagged place where the very last page should have been. “I love this play.”

Murphy stared at him, watching his dark eyes follow every line, his lips form the shapes of every word. He knew it by heart.

He tore the book from Bellamy’s hands and chucked it behind him, at which Bellamy looked particularly offended until Murphy dipped down to fit their lips together, and his eyes fluttered closed again.

“The old Bellamy was a better kisser,” gasped Murphy, sacrificing every breath between kisses to talk, because he couldn’t help it.

Bellamy stopped dragging his thumb along Murphy’s jaw and pressed it against his chin, pulling his bottom lip down to stop him kissing, stop him speaking. “Now you’re just making shit up.”

Murphy shrugged, and Bellamy felt it as he held Murphy and turned his head against the floor to laugh, leaving Murphy’s lips to smile helplessly against his cheek, warm with a blush, his freckles burning like exploding stars.

His touch was the same Murphy had known and his laugh was too, but the feeling of his lips was brand new. And it had nothing to do with life or death, Transcendence or rebirth— only them, taking this last chance to finally start telling the truth.

His smile softened as Bellamy turned toward him again, damn near too tickled by it all to keep kissing Murphy properly. Murphy raised a hand and stroked his knuckles against the side of his face, soft skin and stubble against Murphy’s shiny scars, like he’d always wanted to do.

“Never felt real either, except with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> so this was just a quick little thing i wrote so i could stop going into periodic rages over the finale. 
> 
> thank u so so much for reading [insert begging for a kudos and comment] and i hope if you were sad about murphamy getting beaten to death with a log it made u feel a little better too. gay people i love u
> 
> i am @slugcities (charlie) on twitter come collect neat rocks and shells with me :)


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